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Windows Journalist Takes On Tiger
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Apr 15, 2005 10:17 AM
from the you-can-have-more-than-one-OS-in-the-house dept.
from the you-can-have-more-than-one-OS-in-the-house dept.
BRSQUIRRL writes "Paul Thurrott has posted a review of Mac OS X 'Tiger' on his SuperSite for Windows. He gives it a score of 4 out of 5. Interesting to get a Microsoft Windows journalist's take on Tiger, especially one as hardcore as Thurrott. In the article, he actually confesses that he has 'been a Mac fan [his] entire life.' Interesting, considering some of his criticism of Apple's work in the past."
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everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
An example as proof - I am a huge fan of the Detroit Tigers - and you should have heard me bitch when they traded half the team away for one season of Juan Gonzales (who mailed in his performance when he wasn't milking a debilitating pinky injury), when they hired Phil Garner to manage (ugh), when they fired Sparky Anderson, etc.
Still, I wanted (and want) the Tigers to succeed. This guy is probably no different - he wants Apple to succeed, he just critizes what he believes are dumb things.
Just because you are a fan of a team, company, or some other entity does not mean you should blindly overlook their faults.
Parent
love the computer/OS, hate the company. (Score:5, Informative)
Meh. I don't think this is the greatest analogy.
The best way to summarize my attitude about Apple (as an owner of almost 8 Macs now, starting with the LC) is "love the product, hate the company". Namely, service and support- which are the worst in the industry, and always have been. They're advanced machines, a great operating system. The company itself though, clearly does not subscribe to the "don't be evil" philosophy Google's PR department has been expousing.
My PB 1400 kept crashing while sleeping. I sent it in for repair to TEXAS, the only place you can get it repaired. Each time it came back, the HD was wiped, and on the second trip, they broke the 3rd party ethernet card's jack. On my third attempt to get it serviced, the Apple "customer relations" agent who was supposed to hear out my side of the story...started screaming at me.
My Powerbook Lombard had a screen clutch fail. Like many other Lombards, this causes the video screen cable to get chewed up. Before this, a thick white line suddenly appeared down one side. Apple wouldn't fix any of it.
My Powerbook 17" makes crackling and squealing noises with CPU activity. The hinges loosened up during the warranty period, and when I went into the apple store, the guy said "oh, well, ours in the store does it too." How does a retail demo unit's condition become acceptable...wait a sec, how does "ours fails the same way" suddenly not make it "normal" and not covered by warranty? Then I found out the little power plug on the A/C adapter, called a "duckbill", isn't covered by Apple. "We don't cover that part." "My warranty covers everything. It doesn't say, 'does not cover the power adapter'." "We DO NOT cover THAT PART. They break a lot." "On a three grand laptop you're going to tell me a $10 part isn't covered because it wasn't designed properly and breaks?" Then there was getting the little rubber feet replaced(those are covered, yay!)- I spent 20 minutes waiting for the guy to finish doing PAPERWORK to replace $2 in parts, and I had to initial and sign 5 different "invoices" and statements that I had -actually- received the service in question.
I had a friend who couldn't return her powerbook after 12 days because, despite clear proof on the Apple Store homepage, the customer service reps claimed shipping time was included in the 14 day evaluation period. Slimy. Needlessly so. Guess what? She hates Apple with a passion now, and tells everyone who will listen about how they're a bunch of crooks and liars. She's right.
Parent
Re:love the computer/OS, hate the company. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:love the computer/OS, hate the company. (Score:5, Interesting)
This always works.
The ATI card on my Dual 2GHz G5 failed. It was 4 months after I bought it. I knew it was the card because the AGP card from my Cube worked. I took my G5 to Apple, I told them the video card was bad and they needed to replace it. That's what they did. No charge.
Parent
Re:love the computer/OS, hate the company. (Score:5, Informative)
Also when my wife accidentally turned off the UPS for my powermac it would not come back on. I called applecare and some guy walked me through resetting the motherboard.
My two experiences with Apple in the last two years have been great. Maybe they turned over a new leaf.
Parent
Re:love the computer/OS, hate the company. (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrast this to my friend's Dell repair experience. She bought a top-of-the-line laptop. A couple of months later the motherboard went wonk out, of course that was only determined after three trips to service where the replaced the video card, then the hard drive, and then the processor. When they finally determined it was the motherboard they decided to replace her whole machine. They replaced the machine with a refurb! She was furious, she didn't pay for a machine someone else had used, she payed for a new one. After much wrangling Dell gave her a new machine. So, whereas my support experience with Apple took less than a week and everything went smoothly, hers took two months and her computer was barely useable most of that time.
Parent
Re:love the computer/OS, hate the company. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's funny, they must have paid off [consumerreports.org] ConsumerReports [consumerreports.org] then. Note: the links require subscription, I can't find articles that are free-reg.
Here's a summary of what the articles say:
For Desktops (3/05):
For laptops 3/05: Dude, I'm not denying your experience, but sadly that is probably better than par-for-the-course in the industry. My sister had issues with her iBook (her long fingernails scrached off the lettering on the keyboard) which AppleCare refused to fix... but would she switch to another laptop? Doubtful.Parent
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are true that this (flakey hardware) is one of the primary reasons for Windows' instability, there's a subtle distinction that I think you miss.
Microsoft no longer developes for the PC platform; hardware manufacturers develope for the Windows platform.
Remember back in the early '90s when things were "IBM compatible"? Do you see those words any more? No. You see "Designed from Windows XYZ" on software and hardware.
Microsoft Windows is the new platform, and most things (both hardware and software) are developed for it. The statement that I quote from you implies that MS does the work of dealing with new devices, when in reality it's people that make the devices that have to release Windows drivers (and other OSes sometimes) if they want their product used.
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Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT is why they tie the OS to the hardware. so you don't have to fiddle or hope that your video accelleration is detected.
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Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft, with Windows, has to support every reasonable configuration of x86 hardware there is - with all the quirky motherboards, audio, video, serial ports, 250 formats of memory and that old 5.25" floppy drive you insist on using. The problem being, MS doesn't make any of that.
Apple, being the control freaks they are, dictate that their OS will only work on their proprietary architecture. That way, the hardware is designed for a certain OS (much like many PC hardware is) and, unlike PC OSs, Apple can optimize its OS for its components. It doesn't have to worry how it works on XYZCorp's motherboard or whether it will support the next version of Podunk Inc's sound card.
That's the rationale, and I think it's a good one.
Parent
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Interesting)
All well and good, but even the *BSD support more hardware than Microsoft Windows and still wind up much more stable than any version of Windows
Microsoft has it easy - they target only x86.
Parent
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but this is nothing but a big fat red herring. Microsoft writes the specifications for x86 hardware, and Microsoft can choose to support, or not to support, what ever hardware suits them.
In no fashion is Microsoft forced or obligated to support *any* particular configuration, and recent history has shown quite well that even such an august institution as the United States government cannot force Microsoft to do anything they don't want to do
In fact, Microsoft doesn't even offer *support* for their own product, unless you buy a retail copy. Otherwise, you're left to the tender mercies of the hardware developer that sold you the OEM copy.
What, exactly do you find proprietary about Apple hardware? Is it the PowerPC processors (which are found in many places other than Apple hardware, so therefore must have an available specification)? Is it Open Firmware? Is it PCI or USB? Is it FireWire? Is it Serial ATA? Is it AGP? Is it PCI-X? What?
Possibly the only thing which can be described as "Apple Proprietary" is the bridge chipset, and I'm not even so sure of that. After all, there are many other fine operating systems out there that run just fine on Apple hardware--like OpenBSD, or Linux, in case you were wondering.
And, Darwin seems to work just fine on x86 hardware. In fact, it arguably got its start on x86 hardware. The guys at Apple are no dummies--the upper layers of the OS may not be open source, but you can be sure that they are sufficiently abstracted from the lower layers that it would be a relatively simple job for Apple to port to another platform. They might lose things like AltiVec/Velocity Engine, but vector processors are widely available elsewhere.
For the same reason, I don't buy the argument that Apple will never release an x86 version of Mac OS X--after all, by the same logic, in no way is Apple obligated to make sure that an x86 Mac OS X would be compatible with commodity PC hardware. If Apple were to go down this path, you can be quite sure that commodity hardware would never live up to Steve Jobs' expectations. In fact, I'm shocked that Apple ever released the Mac mini! Who wants to see some crappy old PC monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers next to the elegant Mac mini?
And even Microsoft is no stranger to PowerPC development, if you count Windows NT and the XBox...
Parent
Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the #1 issue...for you and I, but we're not really representative of the marketplace. Most OS buyers don't look for broad video gaming support. I'm also not convinced that building in support for all kinds of gaming hardware will bring wide support for games to the Apple either. It's all about market share, and Apple just doesn't have it. In fact, the latest and greatest Apples will run all of the necessary bleeding edge hardware, but there's little incentive for game developers to sink the necessary amount of cash into developing for the Apple platform.
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Re:everyone is an apple fan at some point. (Score:5, Informative)
You have to remember that at it's heart Apple is a hardware company. Yes they make a great OS, but the purpose of that OS is to drive hardware sales. Making the x86 platform a more user friendly environment would actually hurt apple sales.
Parent
Flavorade? Jim Jones used an off brand? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Bull! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit! What about Automator? What about Core Image/Core Data? What about VoiceOver?
Re:Bull! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
This is Not Really a Review of Tiger, Is It? (Score:5, Funny)
"Ah, still using four tires, I see. And there's a steering wheel, too. Still, the color is nice, and the radio looks expensive."
I prefer reviews that do more than comment on the styling and goo-gahs. I expect him to drive the damn thing, pop the hood and see what has changed. Offer an explanation of why and how these changes improve the user's day-to-day work experience.
I propose that the reason he's discounted the other 198 claimed features is that he has not the foggiest idea what they do or how they fit into the future of Mac OS X.
-Hope
Parent
Re:Bull! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I was forced to use a Jaguar system after months of using Panther. Almost instantly I realized all the little things that make Panther a much better system than Jaguar. None of them notable enough to grab a editorial headline, but the sum of them are substantial. I suspect the same will be true of the Tiger update.
Parent
Re:Bull! (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not. I'm not sure where this rumor got started. Maybe somebody misunderstood it during the demo.
Automator is the modern equivalent of the venerable UNIX command line. You know what makes the command line cool? Pipelines and loops. You can route the output from one command-line tool to the input of another and create pipelines, and you can loop those pipelines over input. You can type, for example,(The sips command is the Mac's command-line image processing utility. Other platforms have their equivalents.)
What Automator does it it lets you create the equivalent of UNIX command lines without having to learn a command-line language and without being locked into just what the command-line gives you. In place of UNIX tools like "find" and "sips," you use Automator actions. Instead of building command lines, you build workflows.
For instance, to implement the same basic operation as an Automator workflow, I'd start by dragging the "Get Selected Finder Items" action to the workflow pane, then follow it with a "Scale Images" action, then a "Change Type of Images" action.
Then I can save my workflow as a Finder plug-in, which means it's available from the Action menu in any Finder window. I can select any file (or group of files), choose the workflow from the Automator sub-menu of the Action menu, and off we go.
That's a ridiculously simple example, sure, but in a work environment it can be amazingly useful. For example, say your job is to post news stories and accompanying photographs on the Web. Each photograph has to be scaled and converted from CMYK to RGB, applying the correct ColorSync profile in the process and embedding IPTC copyright metadata. You could do that today with a program like Photoshop using scripting, or you can do it with Automator in much less time and with a much higher degree of desktop integration. Just click an image and run the "Make ready for Web" workflow. Easy.
Automator actions can be either compiled AppleScripts or Objective-C code fragments (strongly recommended). Into any workflow you can insert a "Run AppleScript" action if you absolutely have to call AppleScript; you can even insert a "Run Shell Script" action if you absolutely have to call a shell script. But the actions themselves are little tiny code fragments written in Objective-C that implement runWithInput:fromAction:error.
Think of a UNIX command-line tool that accepts standard input and sends standard output and standard error and you'll have the idea. An Automator action is basically a command-line tool without the nasty command-line interface.
Will most people use Automator? Frankly, probably not. But most people don't create command-line pipelines and scripts either, even the ones who know how. But for those who want to, Automator is there.
Frankly, I never thought I would like it. It just didn't interest me. But then one day I had to do a tedious repetitive task, and ever since I've been a big-time Automator junkie.
Parent
I've been a mac fan my whole life too! (Score:4, Funny)
High Value (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is finally being recognized by more and more people as offering high value, compared to the competition.
Ease of use and stability with a wide range of capabilities (arguably widest of personal computers...maybe) is starting to make a consumer impact.
It's pretty much his favorite OS... (Score:4, Insightful)
One question (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't mean to sound obtuse, but from what I've read of Spotlight and Microsoft's efforts in file indexing, the goals and results are the same: every file indexed so you can do instant searches (much like what BeOS could do, only a bit faster I believe).
So how is Microsoft's service "father reaching"? Is he including possible network indexing so you can find every file on the network as well (perhaps something for Windows Longhorn Server) - and is this ability to be used in OS X Tiger Server?
I just found it an odd statement, and perhaps someone could clarify. Otherwise, interesting read - Tiger is looking like a good upgrade. $129 worth? Undecided yet, but interesting.
Some meaningless stuff in there. (Score:5, Funny)
and skim-reading, wtf is this?
"Apple touts the ease with which you can upgrade your existing Mac OS X installation to Tiger, or perform a clean install. But if you're not really paying attention during Setup, you can quite easily do the wrong thing, especially if you want to do a clean install."
if you're not fucking paying attention when installing a new OS you can make a mistake!?!?! oh noes, what were Apple THINKING!!!???
Win Vs. Mac (Score:5, Insightful)
But he's used to the system changes being more dramatic like in the P.C. world:
1) DOS (command line)
1.5) Windows 1.0, 2.0 (aborted)
2) Windows 3.0 (whoops kinda shitty, do over)
2.5) Windows 3.1 (works!)
3) Windows 95 (Now like MacOS!)
4) Windows 98 (Now with a web-browser built-in!)
5) Windows ME (What is the diff here again?)
Notice 1.5)-5) are all nothing but DOS running a new graphical shell. And other than "service-pack" level changes, I'm hard-pressed to describe how Win 95/98/ME differ at all.
6) Windows 2000 (Now using NT instead of DOS!)
7) Windows XP
Because XP came out about the same time OSX did (you didn't think the "X" in "XP" was an original marketing idea, did you?) this guy assumes OSX can't have progressed any faster than XP has.
But the truth is OSX has had to progress much faster because it was a brand-new OS to the PowerPC. Windows XP by comparison, had already been out in the market for nearly a decade as "Windows NT," before it got the Windows 95 "Finder" slapped on top of it to be rebranded "Windows XP."
So the best way to think of OSX vs XP is that OSX is a generation ahead of XP in many ways, but it was pretty much brand-new in its 10.0 incarnation. By comparison, XP was not a new OS, and Longhorn will not be a new OS either. "Longhorn," such as it is will be a series of system updates to various XP subsystems.
Additionally, the current thinking on the Longhorn update is to allow people with XP to update these subsystems themselves with special installers, effectively making this a piecemeal update cycle and hardly a whole new unified OS rollout at all. Now who's trying to pass off a series of subsystem updates as a new OS?
Re:Win Vs. Mac (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Win Vs. Mac (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of that delay is probably the result of VM thrashing, since it's typical for RAM overfollows to precede unresponsive programs. Poor VM tuning may be a legitimate problem, but it is a separate issue from your "non-pre-emptive" allegation.
(under TRUE pre-emption the scheduler would terminate it; under windows it gets politely "asked" to die...)
False. That is irrelevant to "pre-emption". If it weren't a pre-emptive system, you wouldn't even have the opportunity to interact with the scheduler window, because the runaway process would COMPLETELY block all other actions.
If you want to see what a non-preemptive system looks like, install Microsoft Windows 3.0 and see what Control-Alt-Delete does there.
I assume linux is suitably obedient too...
Absolutely not. Linux is actually much stricter than Windows in this regard. Linux will NEVER allow a drive to be removed if something is using it, or even maybe if notthing is using it. And, it requires an above-average level of Unix mastery to discover which process has the thing open, like so:
umount:
fedora:~# lsof | grep
famd 11501 User 34r REG 8,5 105274 819965
fedora:~# kill 11501
fedora:~# umount
umount:
fedora:~# lsof | grep
famd 11501 User 34r REG 8,5 105274 819965
fedora:~# kill -9 11501
fedora:~# umount
If OS X does otherwise, then it must have shifted away from its Unix(tm) heritage.
Parent
Glad to see... (Score:5, Funny)
It's the sign of changing times - Mac lovers no longer have to hide their feelings for fear of being ridiculed and discriminated against by society.
Expect to see more examples of Mac pride across the country, as more people come to terms with who they are, and stand up for their rights.
Re:Glad to see... (Score:5, Funny)
To celebrate this new idea of Mac Pride, Apple should create a version of their logo that, instead of being white or aluminum, is a rainbow of colors to symbolize openness like other "pride" movements have done.
Who knows, a logo like that could be so popular that people would get a tattoo of it.
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About face? (Score:5, Interesting)
And since announcing its Longhorn desktop search intentions, Microsoft's worst fears were realized. Other companies began copying the Microsoft desktop search strategy, knowing that the never-ending Longhorn delays would help them get to market sooner and appear to be nimbler and even more innovative, though it's sort of astonishing how transparent that latter claim is. Chief among these competitors are Apple and Google.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced in June 2004 that the next version of Mac OS X, due sometime in 2005, will include a desktop search feature called Spotlight. The Spotlight feature set is a rough subset of the desktop search features Gates discussed in late 2003, but presented to the user with Apple's standard graphical excellence. Spotlight, according to Apple, is a "radically new and lightning fast way to find anything saved on your personal computer. Email messages, contacts and calendars, along with files and folders, all show up in Spotlight results." Spotlight's biggest claims to fame, presumably, are its near-instant search results and support for document meta data, both of which are, again, planned features of Longhorn. But no matter. While Apple has been busy copping Windows features since Jobs returned to Apple in late 1996, the company's tiny market share ensures that very few people will benefit from Spotlight, despite Apple claims that it will deliver on desktop search a year before Microsoft ships Longhorn.
Then in February 2005, he started to change his tune [winsupersite.com]:
I'd like to highlight some of the features that I feel set MSN Search apart from its competitors, chiefly Google [...]
What happened to Apple?
And in today's review [winsupersite.com]:
Apple decided to adopt a similar approach in various places throughout OS X Tiger--including the Finder, Mail 2, and elsewhere--providing Mac OS X users, for the first time, with true instant search functionality. Similar in execution to the instant desktop search feature Microsoft plans to ship in Longhorn next year, and to third party Windows products like MSN Toolbar Suite and Google Desktop Search, Spotlight works as advertised. It delivers near-instantaneous search results from the places you'd most often need to find files or other information.
[...]
Now, this kind of functionality is exceeding cool, because it's the first step toward divorcing ourselves from worrying about the hard-coded locations of files and other data stored on the computer's file system. If you think about it, it's kind of silly that we have to even worry about such a thing, and though recent file system niceties like the My Documents folder in Windows (simply called Documents in OS X) try to simplify matters, the truth is, computers should be good at finding the information we need. We shouldn't have to do all the work.
Not coincidentally, Microsoft is working on similar, if further-reaching, technology for Longhorn. Apple's solution, however, is here right now and it appears to work quite well. Score one for Apple.
Why the about face?
Thurrott's thinking may be... (Score:5, Interesting)
His current protestations aside, Thurrott has a long history of bashing on the Mac. My thinking is that he's starting to realize that the Mac platform is moving ahead more rapidly than Windows, and may be close to achieving what he considers to be parity with Windows.
So if you make your living writing about Windows, it doesn't really do to talk about how far Apple has come with the Mac, or how it may in fact be better than Windows. You focus instead on a different opponent altogether. Microsoft has told the world that it has its sights set on Google. Everyone knows Google is the reigning champ of the consumer Internet application, and that they're trying to route around Microsoft's client OS dominance.
If you're Thurrott, you talk about how nice Apple is on the client end, giving it just enough kudos so as to not lose your credibility entirely, but you also demean the importance of Apple by focusing on Microsoft's war with Google.
Thurrott has always been a difficult guy to figure out, so my guess may be completely off. But it's the only one I can come up with that makes any sense.
Parent
You are hardest on those you truly love (Score:5, Interesting)
So, don't be surprised that Mac fans are vocal and hard on Apple. They just want the Mac to get better...
Minor Revision? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have some quips with this statement (its a favorite of Thurott's too.) Windows 2000 to XP was a minor revision (5.0 to 5.1 I believe.) So was, arguably, Windows 95 to 98. And 98SE to ME.
Also, since it seems Microsoft is releasing most of the cool Longhorn features to Windows XP... XP to Longhorn may very well be a "minor revision" as well.
What an idiot! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we'd call a service pack in the Windows world"
What Windows service packs have come with major new features? A firewall in SP2? Please. Hell, what Windows OS releases have come with major new features?
"It will not change the way you use your computer at all, and instead uses the exact same mouse and windows interface we've had since the first Mac debuted in 1984"
Err...yeah. Sorry, the telepathic mind-reader is coming in 10.5.
"Don't get me wrong, please: Again, Tiger is a solid release. It's just not a major upgrade. And it's certainly not worth $129."
Right. Tiger is not worth $129, but Windows XP is worth $250 or whatever over Windows 2000.
"nor does it include the iWork '05 productivity applications, which include Pages (a weird word processing/page publishing hybrid)"
Weird? Pages is weird?! What the hell is Word, then? Certainly not a word processing/page publishing hybrid, oh no.
Orders of magnitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Automator:
VB/VBScript/VBA (look up SendKeys)
Windows Scripting Host since Windows 2000
Windows Management Instrumentation since Windows XP
You just described Applescript. Not Automator which make Applescript accesible to the user who is not used to writing scripts at all. Imagine if you included a very lightweight version of VB in the OS by default and made it usable by non-programmers.
Core Data: Databinding (available in VB6, MFC,
Binding to... what exactly? Again it's not just data binding, but the actual DATABASE too! That's the whole point. When used apps get free undo capabilities, for example (since you can automatically record and unwind actions taken by the app).
Core Image: DirectX (but main shell doesn't use it, which is sort of good because it keeps base OS video requirements down, and sort bad because Tiger gets cooler graphics)
Avalon (Longhorn)
Not off by an order of magnitude per se, but I think you still have this a bit wrong... Core Image is at a lower level and mainly provides a nice library for quickly modifying images. It's not really like DirectX at all (that's why they have OpenGL). Nor is it like Avalon really, though it makes writing something like Avalon much easier.
Expose: definitely a plus for OSX simply because it looks cool, but Windows' taskbar is definitely HCI-wise superior (and renders an Expose-on-Windows unnecessary simply because it is _way_ more discoverable.
That is so wrong it's not even funny. I use the damn taskbar by day, and Expose by night. From an HCI standpoint it is FAR easier and quicker to find most windows visually than to play Shrunken Taskbar Icon Hunter. Folding the taskbar icons (grouping) helps you find windows easier but is way slow to use. Leaving them all out (which I prefer) makes them unreadable and still makes it hard sometimes to quickly get to what you want.
Expose is the first window finding sceme that took away my yearing for X-Windows style rooms.
There, that's enough counter-groupthink for one day. Bring on the flames.
No flames, just corrections to erroneous data. Really the HCI thing is the only one you have that can really be debated, you just got the others plain wrong.
Parent
criticism and being a fan... (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoa! (Score:5, Informative)
This is far from the truth. In my experience, Windows XP is just a facelift of Windows 2000. Sure, the default colors are different and the buttons look different, but it's all the same stuff - just a minor upgrade to colors and a bunch of bug/feature fixes.
XP service packs are just that - they fix stuff that is totally broken or flawed, or worse, they layer in new software that I don't want or that break my older apps.
So although I agree with him that Windows XP is a good and solid OS, touting the transition from Windows 2000 to XPsp2 as multiple "major upgrades" looks just like fantasy. I consider them all to be in the "minor bug/feature/UI fix" category.
Evolution, Not Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the writer proves he's still too enamored with the Microsoft software release philosophy in comparison to what Linux and Mac users enjoy.
Consider: When a new Mac OS update is imminent, users are practically enthusiastic on installing on their computer and seeing what new tricks have come from Apple. Generally speaking, these users expect goodness in each update. That's less of the case now in the OS X days than the old OS 9 days, but Mac users don't generally fear their computer or the company that makes it. We like evolution and strive to keep our computers one-up with the others. While a lot more propellerhead and not as intuitive, the power users of the Linux camp also enjoy the fun flavors they get from the latest bug fix of SAMBA or whatever. Using Linux and Mac OS X, to take two common examples of the UNIX families, are fun to tinker with.
A Microsoft Windows user is besieged. And I mean not just with spyware and worms, but also with Windows Updates. They're doing the same thing as Apple's updates (make no mistake--both companies are giving you bug fixes), but there are so many updates for this mysterious vulnerability or that compromise that a typical home user is overwhelmed by not only by the OS prompting them to the point of annoyance that you have new Windows Updates as well as the number of patches and attacks. And Windows can be so finicky and problematic that most users don't WANT to rock the boat by applying some update. This situation has improved a bit with Windows XP, but there's still too much information.
Microsoft's marketing expects you to find a revolution in every box they sell. I don't know about you, but revolutions as a whole are a bitch to endure, no matter what form they take. Evolution, on the other hand, gives you change without making you feel swept up by it.
You'll know what I mean when the Windows Longhorn project is finished. It may be new and powerful, but most of us just want to write a letter, not launch and land a Space Shuttle. Simple is good.
Tiger is more than Thurrot thinks (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac OS X 10.4 is certainly much more than a "minor upgrade with few major new features", especially when you look past the somewhat superficial nature of the "gee-whiz" features like Spotlight and Dashboard. The improtant changes are under the hood, in the form of Core Data, Core Image, better SMP support, etc.
I certainly do, however, agree with him in chiding Apple for their frequent UI experimentation that seems to throw one usability concept after another out with the bath water, so to speak.
But as far as likening Tiger to "what we'd call a service pack in the Windows world", consider the contents of the Slashdot story that appears on the front page along with this article, Survey Shows Admins Avoiding SP2 [slashdot.org].
While Apple may indeed find that "Tiger's retail success is far more important to Apple than Windows' retail success is to Microsoft", my prediction is that Apple, on the day of Tiger's release (or very, very shortly thereafter), will have sold enough copies of Tiger at $129 or $199 to cover 24% of their installed Mac OS X user base, while Microsoft, having given away Windows XP Service Pack 2 for free eight months ago, still can't seem to convince enough of their users to adopt it to even hit the one-quarter mark.
I have already ordered the upgrades for my three compatible Macs, how about you?
Re:Tiger is more than Thurrot thinks (Score:5, Interesting)
Thurrot may consider Tiger "certainly not worth $129", but I wonder how much he's willing to pay to upgrade his Windows machines to make them 25-50% faster?
Parent
Inconclusive conclusions from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we'd call a service pack in the Windows world.
Is this not a contradiction? The Windows XP SP1 (and SP1a) [microsoft.com] and SP2 [microsoft.com] feature lists look a lot to me like the Mac OS X updates such as the most recent 10.3.8 [apple.com] (incidentally, also free like MS's Service Packs).
If OS X Tiger has just a few new features, (the two TFA discusses as most important are Spotlight and Dashboard), then what is Longhorn? [hint: Microsoft doesn't even know [microsoft.com]]
in closing, the review gives props to Apple for OS X but in the end, TFA's author is unable to keep himself from borg-like Apple bashing.
Gotta ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
These features are not Service Pack level features, and if they were, God bless em, Microsoft would have ripped them off and crammed them into XP by now.
You read it here first (Score:5, Funny)
Well bust my buttons. I didn't know there were "niceties" in the XP UI that make it more "appealing" to new users. Colors? Whiz-bang? Buttons the size of Delaware? Conversely, is he purporting that OS X is better for the power user -- to "get your job done?"
I always thought it was the other way around. My bad, dude.
Point - counterpoint (Score:5, Interesting)
Dashboard
Um, right. Since PCs and Macs have had tiny utility applications since the early 1980's, it's unclear why Dashboard widgets can't simply work on the normal Mac desktop (which is how Konfabulator works, incidentally). Having to move into and out of the Dashboard to perform these tasks seems a bit unnecessary. Why segregate them like that?
I guess in the Mac world not everything belongs on the desktop. Apple likes to keep system utilities organized with other system utilities. In the Windows world, you can put shortcuts everywhere: Desktop, Quicklaunch, Menu Bar, etc. It's a style change if you are used to Windows.
Apple's Mail application (sometimes referred to as Mail.app because of it NeXTStep heritage) has been significantly updated in Tiger, though I'm a little unexcited about yet another user interface style being introduced in OS X. . . The toolbar buttons, however, are bizarre looking and unlike the icons found in any other Mac OS X applications, another case of Apple trouncing all over its own user interface conventions. It's astonishing to me that Mac fanatics let the company get away with that.
This is downright inflammatory. MS changes the UI in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways. XP's color scheme is vastly different from the 98/2000.
Apple touts the ease with which you can upgrade your existing Mac OS X installation to Tiger, or perform a clean install. But if you're not really paying attention during Setup, you can quite easily do the wrong thing, especially if you want to do a clean install.
Anytime you do an system upgrade, you have to be careful in any OS whether it's Linux, Windows, OS X. SP2 isn't even an upgrade but a service pack, and it might crash your system.
Apple's success has hinged largely on its ability to keep its product plans secret and then use "event marketing" to pump each release as the be-all, end-all solution to whatever problems you may be having.
Every new software markets itself as the solution to all your problems. Win 95 was supposed to the holy grail. No wait, it still uses DOS in the background. It'll be 98. Nope. 2000. Nope. ME. God no. XP. Okay we're getting there. Longhorn will have all these features. Well, maybe not this feature or that one. Overpromising isn't unique to Apple or MS. At least Apple doesn't tease with all the features it said it would build but then withdraws them later.
But Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) was arguably a bigger advance over the initial release of XP than Tiger is over Mac OS X 10.3. My issue here is with marketing, not with reality.
SP2 fixed a lot of the things wrong with Windows security. Upgrading the firewall, adding a spyware tool, etc. is not an OS upgrade. It's a patch. Tiger adds new features and tools. According to MS marketing, Linux is slow and isn't ready for the enterprise and no company really uses it. Especially when they don't mention Google, Amazon, etc.
Apple also offers a 5-Mac "Family Pack" for $199 that lets you install the system on up to 5 Macintosh systems, though there is no copy protection or activation scheme in the single Mac version that would prevent you from installing a single copy on multiple machines.
So, Apple will rely on the honor system instead of putting up obstacles and Gestapo-like enforcement tactics (i.e. Ernie Ball). It might cost them sales but it won't piss off their customers.
My sources on the beta tell me that testers were shocked Apple decided to finalize the software when they did. Apparently a lot of problems still exist in the final code.
This is not new. Every new software isn't 100% perfect. I'm sure all Windows versions were not 100% ready either.
Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we'd call a service pack in the Windows world.
Maybe the problem here is that the author is thinking in terms of Windows. MS always trumps the changes no matter how small. Apple's style is to be minimalist and doesn't mention anything that the enduser may not see.
Thurrot is irritating but popular (Score:5, Interesting)
Good, that's out of the way. Now on to this review and why it irritates me intensely. Paul Thurrot might indeed be a closet Mac fan, although, from his previous articles, one would never guess it. The fact that he has numerous Macs, including a newish 12" Powerbook, and has in fact been running OSX since the 10.0 release indicate either someone who is obsessed with something he hates, a closet admirer, or, more to the point, someone who makes his money, aka his bread and butter, his moola, his bucks etc, by pumping out glorious reviews of Microsoft's software. I seriously doubt that the powers that be in Redmond would be happy to see Winsupersite (which is about as Microsoftish a name as one can come up with, but that's something for another post) offer scathing criticisms of Longhorn and general dissings for Microsoft's piss poor security record and abuse marketplace behaviour.
So, it might well be that he does like Macs and OSX in general, but can't afford to say so too loudly on a site that is mainly a mouthpiece for Microsoft OS betas.
I still find the review irritating, even in that light. The features he highlighted, such as Dashboard, Spotlight, Safari and Mail, are things one sees from a cursory 5 minute glance of the OS, but generally, one would expect a review to offer more depth than that. I am surprised (although maybe I shouldn't be, given his history) that he never mentioned Automator, XCode 2 or any of the new APIs, which, given that Micosoft has always aimed its OS squarely at developers, is a bit surprising.
You can argue till you're blue in the face about whether Dashboard is a Konfabulator ripoff or a Desk Accessory renewal, and you can argue that Windows has MSN search, Google Desktop etc, but the real new features in Tiger are under the hood and are aimed squarely at developers, just as Microsoft has always done, except that I think that Apple is doing it better (get to why in a sec)
The APIs, such as CoreImage/Video and CoreData make multimedia a breeze in development and embedded Database development incredibly easy (and you can't tell me that these two features are not needed by an enormous number of applications from media to business). XCode 2 offers automatic diagramming of class structures, pointing to the beginnings of a free CASE tool that comes with the OS, and I have yet to see Thurrot offer the tidbit that XCode comes free with the OS (he seesm to ignore this bit every time he does a review). So when will MS offer VS.Net for free? This is Apple's big hook with developers. The IDE is free and remains free, even when you're not a student anymore.
Add to that that Dashboard widgets are generally HTML/CSS/Javascript apps. There are literally millions of web developers who can make applications for Dashboard right off the bat, without learning a single new thing. And Automator for making a point and click batch processing app makes the OS very attracctive to those who need to automate daily tasks but can't code to save their lives.
Finally, I do find some of Thurrot's more superficial criticisms insightful. The new Look and Feel in Mail 2 now brings the total number of concurrent L&F's to 3 (White, Brushed Metal and Plastic). I feel this is terrible for consistency in the UI. His idea that this is some kind of service pack, however, is pure FUD. he KNOWS better than this, and if his reviews of Longhorn betas were anywhere near as critical as his reviews of OSX, I would take him more seriously.
Sadly, as is the case with Apple zealots, there are a lot of Windows zealots out there (generally the folk who feel hurt everytime an article about a new exploit for windows is published here on slashdot) who see Winsupersite and Thurrot as some kind of high priest, and they'll take him seriously.